Florida author to give placemaking presentation Friday at city hall

The Mt. Pleasant City Commission will host a community engagement forum 9 a.m. Friday in the commission chambers of city hall.

The forum, Engaging Your Citizen Changemakers, will feature author Peter Kageyama, who penned For the Love of Cities, a book about community placemaking.

Kageyama, a community and economic development consultant based in St. Petersburg, Fla., speaks at forums about bottom-up community development, and the people who make change happen.

Kageyama’s workshop is Mt. Pleasant’s next step in its series on placemaking, which “identifies unique assets of a community in order to create and develop quality of life and economic sustainability and engage the next generation of changemakers,” according to the city’s website.

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Mt. Pleasant is one of the first communities in Michigan to receive placemaking training with the help of the Michigan Municipal League.

In the past, Mt. Pleasant has held placemaking training sessions to help identify unique assets of Mt. Pleasant, and analyze how they can be used to create and develop a quality of life and economic sustainability.

At a January placemaking session, MML strategic initiatives director Arnold Weinfeld stated that placemaking is about turning a location from one you can’t wait to get through, into one you never want to leave.

“Sense of place is that emotional feeling you get when you’re in a community,” Weinfeld had said. “It’s that feeling you get, good or bad — obviously we want that good feeling — when you’re in a place.”

Weinfeld had said Mt. Pleasant could benefit from the students of Central Michigan University, and aim to make Mt. Pleasant into a place they choose to stay in after graduation.

Kageyama’s forum is open to the public and free.

Kageyama’s book was recognized by Planetizen as a Top 10 Book for 2012 in urban planning, design and development.

Kageyama was recently designated a special adviser to St. Petersburg’s mayor.

Randi Shaffer is a reporter at the Morning Sun. She can be reached at 989-779-6059, rshaffer@michigannewspapers.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/randi.shaffer.

About the Author

Randi Shaffer has been the Isabella County reporter for the Morning Sun since 2012. An alumna of CMU, she is in the process of obtaining her MSA degree. Obsessions include hockey, yoga and vegetables. Reach the author at rshaffer@michigannewspapers.com
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